Hey guys! So, I think we all get the gist of what's going on now. I skipped over Twilight and went straight into New Moon. If there are things that some of you don't understand, they will be explained in later chapters. Also, someone pointed out to me that I labeled the last chapter wrong. This is chapter three, the previous one was chapter two. Thanks for reading and reviewing!
Chapter 3
This morning, like every other morning since Edward left, we sat at the kitchen table. Bella stared at her untouched cereal, dad stared at Bella and I drank my coffee in silence, patiently waiting for this agonizingly quiet breakfast to end.
Dad's fist came down on the table, causing the last bit of my coffee to spill out of the fallen mug. I stared at it longingly. "That's it, Bella! I'm sending you home."
We stared at dad in shock. "But," Her voice barely above a whisper. She hadn't used it in so long I was surprised she still had one at all. She looked so confused. She genuinely didn't know how bad she's been.
"I'm sending you back to Renee,"
Dad looked at me hesitantly, begging for back up. He wouldn't find it in me though, I still remembered when mom came to take Bella away a few months ago. I didn't want to relive that. We watched Bella as realization washed over her face.
"What did I do?"
My sister looked as if someone had punched her in the gut. I looked back down at my forgotten spilled coffee. I took a rag from the oven and started a new brew.
"You didn't do anything. That's the problem!"
"You want me to get into trouble?" Bella didn't get it. I stifled a laugh. This was not a funny situation, but I'm past the point of sanity.
"It doesn't matter at this point Bella, do whatever you want, just do something!"
You could clearly see the hurt on her face. She had tried, I know she had, but Edward had left her with more than just a simple broken heart.
"But… did I do something wrong?"
"You've been absent Bella and he wants you to go back to normal. That's what he means." I whispered back to her as I poured the coffee into my thermos for school. I had taken to whispering whenever my sister was concerned. She always flinched when we spoke too loud.
"I'm sorry..."
I walked over to the table and kissed the top of her head. "It's fine Bells, you don't have to apologize." I grabbed her bowl and put it in the sink before grabbing our backpacks and kissing our dad goodbye.
The drive to school was silent for the most part, like most days, but this time Bella commented on the weather, which was good. Due to her extremely slow driving; we got to school right on time even though we left the house some 30 minutes earlier than usual. We walked through the halls invisibly. No one looked our way anymore. It had been hard the first few months after the Cullens left. Bella was under constant scrutiny and since I was constantly glued to her side, making sure that she wasn't going to fall apart, I was too. I think that by mid-December most everyone got bored of us. Not even Mike and Jessica talked to her anymore. Last month Eric had run into my English class and told me that Bella had lost it. When I found her in her seat, tears were rolling heavily done her bright red cheeks from the looks everyone was giving her. That had been one of the few times she had broken down in school.
"Lizzie, are you doing anything tonight?" Bella whispered.
"I have tutoring at Emily's, why?" Tutoring had stopped for a while now. I usually just hung around the house with the pack and helped Emily cook. They were in a much better mood now that the Cullens were gone. They knew not to talk about it around me though, Bella falling apart because of them made me sensitive to that subject. The only one I disliked was Edward, the rest of them were just fine in my book. With them gone, I didn't have someone protecting me from Laurent at school. Sam believed that a vampire wouldn't go waltzing into a school full of humans to simply find me and I trusted his judgement. I looked at Bella, but she just nodded her head and looked away. "Did you want to do something?"
"Dad wants me to have a social life,"
"I don't think I count Bella..."
"You're right. Maybe I should see if Jessica wants to go to the movies."
That was the end of that conversation. I needed time to myself. I couldn't go everywhere with her. Billy's house must be a mess and I haven't seen the guys in such a long time. Maybe we could go to the diner. Embry would be working today.
The thought of seeing Embry gave me butterflies. This wasn't anything new, something had happened last year that made me start having feelings but I still couldn't pinpoint it.
I was late, and I knew it, but I didn't want to get to Math. I walked around the small building for a while before I willed myself back to where I was supposed to be.
I had just turned into the hallway when I saw a tall man with olive skin swiftly round the corner at the end of the hall. My heart stopped and I felt the air leave my lungs. I quickly got into the janitor's closet and shut the door behind me. It was him. Laurent was in the school and he knows I'm here. I crawled into a corner behind the shelves of cleaning supplies. My breaths were coming out in short gasps, I couldn't get enough air into my lungs. This couldn't be happening to me. Not right now. I hadn't gotten a panic attack since the first one right after I realized I had been left alone without a vampire in the house to protect me from the same monster that was now in my school. I thought my anxiety was at bay, sleeping in Bella's room helped. My hands shook as I took out my cell phone and called Emily's.
"Hello?" a gruff voice sounded on the other end. More tears rolled down my face as I registered whose voice that was.
"Sam!" Sobs racked my body as I struggled to form coherent words. "Sam he's here, he's in the school." I spoke as clearly as possible. The line went dead. I hugged my phone tightly to my chest and angled the backpack in front of me as a shield, as if that would stop the murderous vampire from getting to me.
After only ten minutes the door ripped off its hinges and I was pulled into Paul's arms. "I'm taking you to Emily's." I sobbed into his chest as he carried me out, being careful not to walk in front of any windows so that we wouldn't be seen. He started running down the road with me in his arms. They had come in their wolf forms and we couldn't take Bella's truck. I felt my body go numb as I realized who we had left behind.
"Sam and Jared are going to keep an eye on Bella after they make sure that the leech is gone." Paul said, as if he had read my mind.
"Okay" I sniffled and tried to calm down. I was safe now and Bella would be too. We made it all the way to La Push before Paul was sure that I was okay and let me walk. He spent the whole walk to Emily's sniffing the air, like a dog, and trying to guess what she was making for lunch. If his goal was to get me to laugh than he did well.
Emily ran out of the house, pulling me into her arms the second she was close enough. She smoothed my hair, "I don't know how many more times you are going to scare me like this, but you have been great practice for motherhood". Emily always had a way of making you feel loved.
There was already a plate waiting for me at the table. Emily scrunched up her nose at my coffee habit, as always, and told me to eat up. The three of us sat at the table and devoured the large breakfast. Biscuits, pancakes, scrambled eggs, everything you could ever ask for. Paul told us about how his mom had gotten in a fight with one of the customers at Embry's mom's diner, where she worked as a waitress. They told me funny stories of things that had happened before I had found out about their secret. I had a feeling that they were doing it to help me relax and like always, it worked.
